Bones and Silence
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season430 pages, about 9 hours: the length of 1.3 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbChapter One is an anonymous letter to Dalziel announcing a suicide; Dalziel then witnesses a fatal shooting through a neighbor’s window.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 17 reviews from critics and book blogs, 10 credit the plot and none credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesKirkus Reviews places it alongside Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, both on the shelf, ranking it above their recent work.
The case for it
on the stuffy canon
“lending authenticity even to such character types as a stuffy canon and his disillusioned wife”
Unsigned review · Publishers Weekly, 1 July 1990 on red herrings and twists
“great characters, humour, red herrings and plot twists”
a book blog on Dalziel playing God
“the fat man has to climb a narrow ladder”
a book blog on Sergeant Wield
“He is everything you want in a policeman; hard working, honest, loyal”
a book blog
The case against
on the prose style
“a bit too much imitation of accent, and a sprinkling of ten-dollar words”
a book blog on the plot’s strands
“Lots of different strands to the plot-line, which required, in places, very careful reading”
four stars · Amazon on Dalziel’s likability
“Andy Dalziel is one of the most un-likable characters in English detective fiction”
three stars · Amazon on the book’s length
“the book was too long, resulting in a periodically sluggish reading experience”
a book blog
